A Matter of Luck
If ever there was a man down on his luck, it was Colby Blackburn. After a lackluster performance at school, he was forced to endure a succession of low-paying, dead-end jobs that included pumping gas, bagging groceries, loading trucks and working on an assembly line at a frozen food company. Yet dim though his career prospects were, there was no limit to his dreams and aspirations. He remained confident that someday his luck would turn, and he would be a wealthy man.
Like many Americans in his modest income bracket, Colby believed his best hope of becoming rich was by either winning the lottery or hitting the jackpot at the gaming resorts; however, after years of faithfully playing Mass Cash, Powerball and Mega Millions in addition to making regular pilgrimages to the Native American-owned casinos in nearby Connecticut, he had yet to score a big win.
"I was this close," he declared to his coworkers one day in the lunchroom of the frozen food factory, holding his thumb and index finger about a sixteenth of an inch apart. "I was only one number away from three hundred and eighty-eight million dollars. If they had called eighteen instead of seventeen, I wouldn't be here today. Instead of shoveling snow in New England, I'd be sitting on a beach in the South of France or maybe sailing in a yacht around one of the Greek islands."
"One number! That's a damned shame," one of his buddies commiserated.
"You still think you're gonna hit the lottery?" teased Dell Harriman, another worker on the assembly line.
"Somebody has to win—eventually, and I've got just as much of a chance as anyone else," Colby reasoned.
"No, you don't. And do you know why? Because gambling is for suckers. It's a sickness, an addiction you can't control. Besides, you're a loser, L-O-S-E-R, loser."
The employees in the immediate vicinity of the two men looked at each other uneasily, fearful that a fistfight might break out between them, but Colby was not the type of man to be goaded into a serious argument. He took even the cruelest insults and sharpest barbs in stride.
"I have faith that someday I'll be a winner—maybe not this year or the next or the one after that, but someday. You just wait and see. I'll make enough money to quit this job, move out of South Boston and travel the world."
"Sure you will," Dell snidely replied. "Just a word of advice, though. Don't begin packing away your snow shovel yet."
Laughter eased the tension that had previously gripped the people on the assembly line, and everyone returned to work.
* * *
The cold, wet winter weather finally passed. Along with the warmer temperatures, the spring brought with it Colby's first casino weekend of the year. For the ever-hopeful gambler, every April there was a trip to Foxwoods and every October the Mohegan Sun.
Early Saturday morning, the second week of April, Colby put his overnight bag in the trunk of his fifteen-year-old, rusty Subaru Legacy and headed toward the Massachusetts Turnpike. In his wallet he carried his Christmas bonus, the check his sister had sent him for his birthday and what little money he had been able to put aside over the winter months. Colby hoped to parlay this stake into several thousand dollars, although in past trips he usually returned home with an empty wallet.
"I have a feeling things will be different this time," he announced hopefully, as he rolled down the Subaru's windows and felt the fresh air blow against his face.
In just under two and a half hours, Colby arrived at the Foxwoods Resort and Casino. Despite his eagerness to rush to the nearest slot machine, he first checked in at the desk and then took his bag upstairs to his room.
On the elevator ride back down, he shared the car with an attractive woman, a real beauty with long, honey-colored hair and dazzling emerald green eyes. When the woman saw him staring at her, she smiled demurely. Colby, an unattached bachelor, put his head down, his face red with embarrassment.
"Are you here with one of the conventions?" she asked.
"No," he replied, summoning the courage to look the woman in the eyes. "I'm here by myself."
"Me, too. Maybe we can eat dinner together," she suggested innocently. "I just hate to eat alone."
"Sh-sure," Colby stammered.
As with other aspects of his life, Colby had always been unlucky at love. He never dated a girl for longer than a month. In fact, most of his relationships were one-night stands.
"So it's a date, then?" the pretty blonde asked.
"You bet!"
"By the way, my name is Heidi. And yours is?"
"Colby."
"Well, then, Colby, why don't we meet in the lobby at six?" she asked as the elevator came to a stop on the ground floor and the doors opened.
"That sounds good to me," Colby agreed, beaming from ear to ear.
My luck is beginning to change already, he thought optimistically as he headed toward the nearest slot machines.
* * *
All afternoon Colby fed his hard-earned dollars into the one-armed bandits. By early evening, he was ahead more than eight hundred dollars. He was on an unprecedented winning streak, and he did not want to stop; but the memory of Heidi's green eyes called to him. So he reluctantly left the slot machine and headed toward the lobby.
He looked through the crowd of people, many of whom were attending one of the ongoing conventions. To Colby's disappointment, he could not find the woman with the honey-colored hair among them. The shame and humiliation of having been so easily duped by a practical joke devastated him. Either Heidi was a sadistic bitch who enjoyed tormenting total strangers, or he had been set up by someone he knew. His bet was on Dell Harriman. God knows the two men had never gotten along.
Colby headed across the lobby toward the elevator, eager to escape the sounds of merriment and laughter, to seek refuge in the safety and seclusion of his room. He pressed the button and waited for the car to descend. Finally, the doors opened.
"Hello there," Heidi said cheerfully. "I'm so glad you're still here. Sorry if I'm a few minutes late, but I wasn't wearing a watch."
"It's okay. I'm in no rush," Colby assured her, feeling relief flood over him.
The two decided to eat a casual dinner at the resort's Hard Rock Café. Afterward, they did some window shopping and then went to the arcade. It was nearly eleven when Heidi suggested they try their luck at a few table games. Colby had his eight hundred dollars of winnings in his pocket, but he wondered how long they would last at a blackjack game or a roulette table. Normally, he was a small-time gambler who preferred betting a dollar at a time in the slot machines.
"They say the slots are for old ladies," he laughed apologetically, "but I prefer to lose money at a slower pace."
"Think positive," Heidi encouraged him. "Maybe Lady Luck will be with you tonight. Besides, you know how the old saying goes: you have to bet big to win big."
Against his better judgment, Colby stopped at the roulette table and placed a twenty-dollar bet on number eleven. The croupier spun the wheel.
When the ball came to a stop, Heidi cried with delight, "Number eleven. You won! I told you luck might be with you tonight."
Colby moved all his winnings to number twenty-four and was astonished when he won again. By midnight, he had amassed more than ten thousand dollars.
* * *
The weekend passed quickly, and Colby returned to Boston, having won more money in two days than he normally earned working on the assembly line all year.
It was a changed man who faced Dell Harriman early Monday morning. It was a man who had acquired self-confidence, not just from his financial gain but also from his budding romance with the beautiful Heidi.
"You look pleased with yourself this morning," Dell noted as the two men punched in at the time clock.
"That I am."
"What did you do? Win the bingo jackpot at St. Michael's?"
"No. I went down to Foxwoods where I had a pretty good run of luck, if I do say so myself. Oh, yes," he added almost as an afterthought. "I also met a girl down there."
"A girl, huh?" Dell laughed.
"Yeah. A beautiful blonde. I'm going to see her again this weekend."
Since the day he met Heidi, Colby's luck bordered on the phenomenal. No matter what he bet on—poker, blackjack, roulette, horse racing, jai alai or the Red Sox games—he rarely lost. By the middle of August, he had made enough money gambling to quit his job, move out of his one-bedroom apartment above a shop on Essex Street into a three-bedroom house in Mystic, Connecticut, and trade his rusty Subaru for a brand-new Hummer.
The more money Colby made, the more self-confident and daring he became. Inexplicably, the more daring the young man became, the more cautious Heidi grew.
"I don't think you should spend so much money," she advised. "Why don't you put some away for a rainy day?"
"There won't be any more rainy days for me," he boasted. "Nothing but blue skies ahead for Colby Blackburn."
"You don't know that. After all, your luck could change."
Ironically, the anger that never surfaced in the years he had been a loser frequently flared up once luck was with him.
"If I want your opinion, I'll ask for it," he snapped.
Heidi turned away, hurt by his outburst. Colby apologized immediately.
"I'm sorry. Please don't be mad at me. I just don't want you to worry about me. I'm a winner, and I'm going to remain a winner."
The expression of sadness on Heidi's face irritated him, for it could only mean one thing: she had no faith in him.
To hell with her, he thought.
There were other women in the world, ones every bit as pretty if not prettier than she was. Colby was well on his way to becoming a wealthy man, and he would not have any difficulty replacing her—or so he thought.
* * *
Colby Blackburn's streak of extraordinarily good fortune continued through the final months of summer, the autumn season and into the beginning of winter. On the day before New Year's Eve, while he and Heidi were walking through the casino at Mohegan Sun, Colby heard a familiar voice come from the direction of the progressive slots.
"Hey, Blackburn, is that you?" Dell Harriman called.
"Dell! What are you doing here?" Colby replied, surprised at seeing his former coworker. "Aren't you the guy who said gambling was for suckers?"
"I admit I was wrong in your case," Harriman confessed good-naturedly.
"I see you finally got bit by the gambling bug!" Colby laughed.
The other man shrugged.
"I just had a little extra cash left over from my Christmas bonus, so I decided to try my luck."
"And?"
"I failed miserably! I'm down to a handful of change. When that's gone, that'll be it for me."
Colby reached into his wallet and magnanimously took out a hundred-dollar bill.
"Here you go."
"No, thanks."
Dell waved the bill aside. Colby put the money back in his wallet. Then he shook Dell's hand, wished him good luck and walked away.
"Why didn't you invite your friend to join us for dinner?" Heidi asked as the couple made their way to the Bamboo Forest.
"Why ruin our meal?" Colby answered. "The guy's a real chump. He should have taken the hundred I offered. Who knows? Some of my luck may have rubbed off on him."
Heidi turned and looked back at the handsome young man who counted his change, shook his head and then walked away from the beckoning slot machines.
"Yes," she said. "Maybe Mr. Harriman will have a change of luck at that."
* * *
Later that evening after dinner and a show, Heidi suggested they return to their room.
"Tomorrow is New Year's Eve, and we'll be up most of the night. I'd like to get some sleep now."
"You go up without me," Colby replied. "I'll be up later. I'd like to play a little Texas Hold 'Em before I turn in."
"And what time will that be?"
"Why? Are you planning on writing a book?" he snapped.
"I'd just like to know when you're coming to bed, that's all."
"I don't know. Christ, you're beginning to sound like a nagging wife."
Tears welled in Heidi's eyes.
"If you feel that way, maybe I should just leave."
There was a time when the thought of losing Heidi would have crushed Colby. Now he viewed it with a sense of relief.
"You know, that might not be such a bad idea," he concurred.
Heidi lowered her head to hide her tears. Colby shifted nervously from one foot to the other. He would have preferred a clean break with no crying, no recriminations.
Why do women have to be so emotional? he wondered.
Heidi suddenly raised her head, and Colby was struck dumb by the golden glow that radiated from her emerald-green eyes. The unnatural light intensified until every inch of the young woman's body was awash in gold.
"What the hell?" Colby managed to utter.
The light then became so bright that he had to close his eyes to prevent being blinded. When he tentatively raised his eyelids a few moments later, he saw that the room had become dark and Heidi was gone.
* * *
No sooner had Heidi vanished from his life than Colby's luck soured. Not only did he lose a fortune at the Mohegan Sun that New Year's weekend, but he continued his downward spiral the following week when he went to Atlantic City. In less than a month's time, he lost his home and his car as well as all the cash he had stashed away in a safety deposit box. In short, Colby Blackburn was broke.
Desperate for money, he returned to his apartment in Boston and to the factory in Lowell where his former boss took pity on him and gave him back his old job. Little had changed on the assembly line. Most of the faces were the same since few people were lucky enough to escape a blue-collar prison. Colby had been one of those rare individuals, but he was not content with what Lady Luck had given him. Like a crazed junkie, he had wanted more, and eventually he lost everything.
"I haven't seen Dell around. Does he still work here?" he asked a coworker during lunch break on his first day back on the job.
"Didn't you hear about him?"
"No, what happened?"
"He won the lottery—over ten million dollars."
"Lucky him," Colby said, feeling the bite of irony in the situation.
"That he is. First, he met that beautiful girl in Connecticut, and then he won the lottery."
Colby put his sandwich down.
"He met a girl?"
"Yeah. A gorgeous blonde. Can you believe it? The two of them bought a big house on Cape Cod where they run a no-kill animal shelter. Imagine spending that much money to save a bunch of stray cats and dogs!"
While Colby was not interested in the plight of homeless animals, he was anxious to learn the identity of Dell Harriman's beautiful blonde.
When the four o'clock whistle announced the end of his shift, Colby punched his time card, got into his car, a twelve-year-old Honda Accord, and headed south toward the Cape. He stopped at a gas station in Buzzard's Bay and got directions to the animal shelter. Ten minutes later, he pulled into the parking lot where he was greeted by the sound of barking dogs. His heartbeat began to quicken as he got out of the car and walked to the front entrance. He opened the door and saw the owners helping a family choose a puppy for adoption.
Colby's reaction to seeing Heidi again was a quick intake of breath followed by a gut-wrenching feeling in the pit of his stomach. She was even more beautiful than he remembered. He looked from Heidi to Dell and felt a sharp pang of jealousy. His former coworker had about him a look of complete happiness.
Colby knew he should not be angry with Dell, but he was still unable to summon the goodwill to enter the animal shelter and congratulate the man on his good fortune. Instead, he chose to leave without speaking to either of them. Before the door closed behind him, however, he saw Heidi—the elusive spirit often referred to as Lady Luck—smile at Dell as she had once smiled at him.
I have no one to blame but myself, Colby sadly realized as he walked across the parking lot to his car. Unlike Dell, I didn't know when to quit. I was too foolish and too greedy to realize that in pursuing an impossible dream, I let happiness slip through my fingers.
Colby started his car and headed toward Boston, where to the end of his days he would live a lonely, unfulfilled life, haunted by the memory of honey-colored hair and emerald green eyes.
Salem always gets lucky in casinos, whether on the East Coast or in Las Vegas. As soon as he shows up, someone pays him to leave!
